There is no doubt that the Indian economy is one of the fastest growing in the world. However, such growth has been socially unbalanced, benefitting only a minority of the population. This, in turn, has brought about huge and increasingly dangerous social and political problems, such as an epidemic of suicides among farmers and the resurgence of the Maoist ‘people's war’. Nevertheless, while Indian growth is limited to a minority of the population, it is real and important. Only the future can tell if, true to some projections, India will become the third or first world economy by 2050. What is certain however is that, because of the rapid economic development of the past three decades, India has already become a key world player.